An X-ray CT device is capable of acquiring a three-dimensional image including an internal structure of an object by carrying out reconstruction processing on an image of the object taken with X-rays from various directions. Conventionally, the features of the X-ray CT device have been used to observe minute internal defects, such as a void and a crack, in a metal part or a resin part, to measure the complicated internal shape of an electronic part, and to analyze a cause of a failure (refer to Patent Documents 1 to 4, for example).
In the present, with the advance of digital technologies, an attempt to use an X-ray CT device as the core of a digital engineering system has begun. The digital engineering system is a technology for integrating a sophisticated CAD/CAM system, a three-dimensional formative system, and a three-dimensional measurement system to achieve efficiency and high quality throughout the whole process from development to manufacturing. In order to develop products with high quality, high performance, and high reliability at low cost, it is necessary to utilize the digital engineering system from the upstream stage of design. This system can be used on a computer from the construction of a digital model to various simulations and is capable of developing products without performing various performance tests using actual models in principle. Particularly, a simulation is a useful tool to check whether a proposed design satisfies the required performance in a detailed design.
Note that, however, even if CAD were used for the design, there is no guarantee that the products have exactly the same shape when those have been made. Parts manufactured by casting, pressing, extrusion molding or the like using a die or a mold often differ from those on a design drawing in details. Practically, the products have not yet been evaluated in quality, performance, and reliability only by simulations. Therefore, in recent years, reverse engineering, in which design values are compared with values of an actual product, has been developed. The X-ray CT device is able to acquire a three-dimensional image including the internal structure of an object by reconstructing an image taken by shooting the object with X-rays from various directions and can be used for a comparison with a CAD drawing and for various structure analyses by directly modeling the image.